


East of Eden

by FigurativelyLiterally



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Alternate Universe - Fullmetal Alchemist 2003/Brotherhood Fusion, Bisexual Edward Elric, Bisexuality, Dimension Travel, Edward Elric Swears, F/F, F/M, Female Edward Elric, My First Work in This Fandom, Past Relationship(s), Restored Alphonse Elric, Unresolved Romantic Tension, Winry's in this but only in Eden's mind, i can think of at least three bi characters in this, like a lot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 08:38:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15433164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FigurativelyLiterally/pseuds/FigurativelyLiterally
Summary: Alchemy blazed life into her body. Eden gasped awake, the empty husk of her brother's armor beside her and the Gate wide open in her mind. Unnatural clarity prevented even a second of confused fog from cushioning the blow of the truth – fucking Truth.“You stupid, stupid brother,” snarled Ed, blinking away tears..2003/Brotherhood fusion. I'll add tags as they apply.





	East of Eden

****Alchemy blazed life into her body. Eden gasped awake, the dead husk of her brother's armor beside her and the Gate wide open in her mind. Unnatural clarity prevented even a second of confused fog from cushioning the blow of the truth – fucking Truth.

“You stupid, _stupid_ brother,” snarled Ed, blinking away tears.

Crawling to her knees, she stared at her hands – _both_ of them! – and spared a glance for Envy's corpse. Damn, Al could be vicious – and so fucking smart, her body didn't even have a bruise. Two perfect arms and legs. Pride and grim determination fueled Ed as she grabbed Al's lifeless armor and dragged it to a pillar. Metal ground against marble, scraping an ugly sound. Leaning it upright wasn't really needed, but treating this particular armor with anything but respect left a foul taste in her mouth.

Ed turned from the armor. Her brother wasn't there, anymore.

The area cleared, Ed clapped up some chalk and began drawing. The rhythmic scratch soothed her ragged edges. She lost herself in the alchemy, and the brief, bittersweet sensation of a whole, unscarred body. As if she were born anew, never having sinned.

This was more than she deserved; but Al never thought like that, did he?

Peace settled over her as she stripped off her jacket and shirt. Boots were chucked after them. Ed drew arrays over her body: the tops of her hands and feet, each shin below her rolled-up pants, forearms, on her chest above her bra, and her forehead, which required a mirror made from her large belt buckle.

Worlds existed beyond the Gate. Each fed the cycle of life on a grander scale beneath Truth's consuming eye. Ed closed her eyes, breathed in serenity, and exhaled purpose.

_Goodbye, Winry._

She clapped.

* * *

Blackness pressed into Ed's eyes. She _screamed,_ as if pain could be expelled from the lungs, as her nerves burned, and _burned._ Torture from her nightmares seared her raw stumps.

Gasping a breath, choking a sob, Ed pressed her face into the grit covering a cold, smooth floor. Her agony echoed into a wide, cavernous space. The air reeked of blood; her body was drenched.

_Get it together, Elric. You're not a fucking kid this time. Gotta save Al._

“A-Al? Alphonse?” She entreated the darkness. “Little brother?”

Flesh palm – only remaining palm – pressed to the sticky, damp grit. Ed pushed up to her elbow, panting. Her head felt cold.

Searing nerves too intense to process wrapped back around into ragged clarity. Blood. Eden dragged her fingers through the puddle. Iron to iron; carbon to carbon. Ed drew on her thigh, first. Felt like the bigger bleeder. Couldn't have said how she knew what she was doing; even blind, alchemy sang to her. Inescapable pain gripped her, but this wasn't remotely as complicated as binding a soul to a suit of armor.

Blue light crackled. Agony blazed white spots in the darkness. Blood congealed. Fat and flesh crawled down and over her wound. It felt – better, but not... Not normal. Nerves still raw within. Fuck-shit- _damn_ the Truth.

Gasping and shaking, Eden began painting blood around her collar bone.

In the awful silence, something huffed gently. She froze. “Al?”

Nothing – nothing but breathing. Wary, Ed completed the array, and split her attention as it activated.

Blue light illuminated the small, naked form of a child upon the floor of a dilapidated ballroom.

_Alphonse!_

Ed almost fucked up her shoulder. She bowed her head, panting, concentrating. Stop the bleeding. Save her baby brother. She stared at his breathing, _human_ body through her bangs.

The light died. Ed dragged herself to him, wet dirt and rocks scraping her arm and knee. She found his shoulder with one sticky hand, and grasped his wrist.

A steady heartbeat pulsed in his warm, living body.

Eden sobbed and, this time, couldn't stop. 

* * *

If only she had her red coat; that would have been perfect. Unfortunately, it was in another fucking dimension, so all she had were her leather pants. The ones tacky with blood.

_I'm a horrible sister._

Damn it, she had to get Al out of there – waking in his flesh body for the first time naked in pitch blackness was _not_ how she would let this happen!

Manic giggles bubbled up from her belly. Ed struggled to find a clean spot to paint an array, and chose her ass. She'd awoken face-down, and hadn't sat in anything since. Blood worked easily with treated animal skin. The transmutation sheared her pants off mid-thigh, and another formed the leather into trousers that would probably fit her brother. He seemed about the size he'd been when they tried to bring Mom back. Made sense; that was how she remembered him.

Guilt pricked her elation. Ed knew how damn irritating it was to be treated like a kid. Al would have to deal with that, since his sister screwed up getting his body back.

Al also wouldn't like her dressing him, but he could just deal. It was nothing she hadn't seen before. And she couldn't even see, so Al could just shut up!

Grinning at the thought of arguing with her flesh-and-blood brother, Ed's hand shook as she blindly dressed him. It was fucking tedious, going from one pant-leg to the other all the way up. She hadn't thought anything would be worse than pulling pants on one-handed, but that thing was putting pants on someone _else._ At least he had short legs.

Hiccoughing a laugh, Ed wiped her tear-streaked cheeks on her forearm, probably smearing blood around. She hadn't cried this much since – hell, since Nina.

Ed rested her unseeing eyes, then opened them. Right. Time to go. With one arm and leg. Preferably before Al woke up. Fuck.

Marble floors. That meant pyrite, an iron sulfide compound; sulfur could transmute into a ton of different molecular states, and... this was gonna smell really fucking bad. S8, a crystalline monomer, when heated becomes Sx, a rubbery linear polymer...

* * *

Eden transmuted a shitty wheelchair. She'd made an iron and pyrite flint, and set a calcite basin of sulfur powder alight. The dull, ghostly blue flame illuminated her work, and stank enough to raise hair.

Gagging on the stench of rotten eggs, Ed scooted on her ass to a spot clear of craters or arrays, dragging the wheelchair behind her. Each jarring movement shot lightening bolts of pain from her stumps. How nostalgic. Last time, Winry was around to help, either by fetching things or as a human crutch.

Would there be a Winry to buy automail from, in this dimension? The underground city existed, so...

One more array. Fuck, this was slow without clap alchemy.

The array wrapped her thick belt around the mold-able, rubber sulfur tires. Her own weight wouldn't reshape them, now. Ed planted her forearm on the hollow iron frame, and, straining, hauled herself into the seat.

“Fuuuuck...” Ed groaned, lolling her head back. Her stumps throbbed, and everything felt like death.

Gotta keep moving.

* * *

Okay. Pulling Al into the chair with her was _maybe_ more difficult than anticipated.

Ed hooked her knee through the arm of the chair, leaned over the seat, and tried dragging Al up by the waist of the leather trousers. Raw nerves pulsed. Her guts leaped as the wheelchair overbalanced. Ed over-corrected, and the chair rattled from side to side, shooting lightening up her skeleton.

Yeah, that wasn't working. She'd need to transmute the floor up to her level.

Slowly, Ed turned to the blood puddle a few feet away. It glistened darkly in the low light. She sighed.

Al wasn't the hard part. Using a wheelchair with one arm was ungodly levels of shitty.

* * *

Eden bent double in the chair to finger-paint the array. She tried not to pressure her stump, but the change of elevation tortured her shoulder. She'd transmuted the floor beneath the blood into a bowl so she could take it with her. It started to congeal, grow skin over top like an old cup of coffee.

Alchemy raised Al on a small platform. The dim, sulfur fire drained the color from his complexion. He might have looked dead, if he hadn't frowned and curled away from her.

Ed's heart leaped at the sign of consciousness. “Al?” she whispered.

No response. Ed pressed her fingers to the same array, and the platform tilted, sliding Al onto her lap. She caught his weight on her good leg, and cradled his shoulders in her elbow.

Alphonse jerked awake.

Ed stopped breathing at seeing those golden eyes, wide and alive and everything they had searched for –

He yelped, flailing –

She screamed as he kicked her _amputated_ _shoulder_.

– and half-rolled, half-scrambled to the floor, where he stepped in the bowl of blood, which slipped –

Eden watched as Al cracked his skull against the platform and slumped over, groaning and clutching his head. Blood splattered everywhere. It wasn't his – no, he was covered in _her_ blood. The calcite bowl lay upside-down.

She meant to say, 'Al, are you okay,' but that changed as she clutched her shoulder.

“You little shit!” Ed ground the words between her teeth. “What'd you do that for?”

“Ow...”

“You fuckin' bet, 'ow!'” Black spots swam in her vision from sheer agony.

“What... what am I...” He raised his gaze from his body to her and gasped – maybe at the blood, or because her ports were missing – then doubled over, coughing his lungs out.

Ed sighed. Poor Al; first thing he smelled in years had to be powerfully rotten eggs. She wouldn't be surprised if he blew chunks.

“Yeah, sulfur dioxide's a bitch,” she said sympathetically. _Least it covers up the smell of blood._

“Wh-wh –” Coughing strangled whatever Al tried to say.

“Easy there, little brother.” Ed rolled herself closer with one foot. “Take slow breaths. It's not so bad.” That was a lie.

“'M not,” Al gasped, “your brother. Who _are_ you?”

 

 

 

 

What?

“What?” Ed's voice cracked.

“You heard me.” Al straightened, and seemed torn between trying to look tough and covering his bare chest. He compromised by crossing his arms, then faltered anyway. “Are... you okay?”

_(He's still so kind, even when –)_

“Do I look okay?” Ed screeched, panic racing. “Why don't you remember me?”

The ballroom threw her voice back at them. Al shrank at her loud tone, but yelled back, “I don't know! I don't know anything! I don't know where we are, or how I got here, or why I'm half naked in, in _leather pants!”_

“Those were _my_ leather pants, and you're welcome that you're not _completely_ naked!”

_(Gave him brain damage, amnesia, didn't connect the neurons in his brain, something –)_

Al's voice screwed up high and pathetic. “I want my sister!”

“I _am_ your sister!”

He squeezed his eyes shut. “No, you're not! Stop saying that!” His fists shook, and Ed thought that he might have punched her, if she weren't crippled, mostly naked, and covered in blood.

Desperation and fear scrambled her brain. “How old are you?”

“Uh.” He took several breaths, taken aback, then politely averted his gaze. “I'm ten?”

_Ooh, oh hell, cock-rocket shitting whore, I am the most evil thing I know, fuck._

“Oh, Al...” Tears heated her eyes, and Ed buried her face in her hand. _Al saved my life, and I can't even do this right._ She rocked in her chair. “I'm so... sorry.” Her voice dropped to barely a whisper. “Dammit.”

Al made a sound like he started to talk, but stopped himself. “What's going on?”

 _You're scaring him._ Ed pinched off her mucus and wiped it on her thigh. She didn't deserve to cry. After drying her eyes with her braid, she leveled Al with a solemn stare.

Fuck, he was a cute kid. He'd hunkered down on his haunches to try and look at her while she hid her face.

She took a deep breath, and _damn_ that smelled bad. “I'm going to make a wild guess... that the last thing you remember is doing human transmutation... and being ripped apart in the rebound.”

Now, he _really_ looked scared. “I don't... What do you mean?”

“You heard me.”

His chest rose and fell several times, breaths worryingly quick. “How do you know about that?”

Ed grabbed the edge of the abrasive platform. Limestone. Transmuting the marble to its prior, less dense state had saved on crater depth. Using it as leverage, she pulled herself out of her chair and slid down beside him.

She needed to be on Al's level for this. “Look at me.”

“I said, how do you know that?” Al tried to glare without looking directly at her. Annoying little gentleman.

“Look at my face.” Ed waited until she caught his eyes; the same color as her own. Low, blue flame illuminated their similar features. “I know because I was there.”

Alphonse's expression broke.

* * *

Cool, rough limestone pressed to her bare back. Blood soaked heavy in her bra, which was intensely gross, but she couldn't disregard Al's comfort like she would her underwear. Sulfur dioxide choked the stale air. The basin of blue fire had grown faint; sulfur burned slowly, but she would need to add more, soon. 

Eden sat beside her brother, resting her hand on his head, silently supportive. He hugged his legs, crying into his knees. They did this a lot when Mom died.

Of the times she had told their story, this was the worst.

_Where did I screw up? Why doesn't he remember?_

Then Al realized the sticky stuff everywhere was blood, and that set him off again.

* * *

“I'm really sorry I hurt you,” Al apologized _again._

Eden rolled her eyes, trying not to breathe. The calcite basin of sulfur sat on her lap to light their way, right beneath her fucking nose, and in that moment she regretted a lot more than her shitty life choices. “Kid, I'd be more worried if you didn't kick weird strangers who grabbed you while you're unconscious.”

Al mumbled incoherently.

“I'm sorry, what was that?” Ed cupped a hand behind her ear. “You're so right and you always are, my perfect and _super_ tall and smart sister? 'Cause that's what I thought.”

“All of this is my fault!” His yell echoed into the underground city. The furthest reaches of grand architecture vanished to darkness, swallowing his voice.

 _Oh. It's this, again._ Ed blinked at the basin of deep, indigo liquid wreathed in blue flames. The white marble insulated her lap from the heat, but it still felt warm. Her bangs framed her face. They had this argument many times, but the first had been the worst.

“I made my own choices, and I'm paying for them.” She followed the script mechanically.

Alphonse stopped pushing her wheelchair. “You never should have had to pay for mine. If I had just said no –”

“You tried to. I didn't listen.”

“I didn't say anything until after we'd been studying for years, and I didn't try hard enough, and, and look at your body! This is  _all_ my fault!”

 _Ooh,_ she would have slapped that kid if she could reach his face.

(That was not a short joke.)

Careful not to jostle the burning sulfur, Ed twisted in her seat and grabbed Al's fist. His knuckles were white around the back of her chair. “You paid more than I ever did; you just don't remember. And I would sacrifice my limbs a hundred times if it meant saving you, because protecting you is my job!”

Al tried to pull his hand away. “And protecting _you_ is _my_ –”

Ed crushed his fist on her grip. “It sure fucking isn't!”

Mom whispered to _her_ to watch out for her little brother, Ed taught _him_ how to read from Hohenheim's books, and he didn't join the military to give her a chance at a normal life, so – fuck, she was getting off-track.

Al trembled with emotion. “You –”

“Let's keep going.” Ed released him and sat straight in her chair. “We can argue once we have clothes and clean air to breathe.”

He didn't move. “You're so impossible!”

“This ain't gonna push itself.”

“I don't know how I ever thought you weren't you, no one else could be such a jerk!”

“Let's go, Al.”

“No!”

This worked better when Ed could walk away. She closed her eyes. “What do you want from me, Al? My arm and leg are gone, and whining isn't going to change that.” Self-loathing gnawed at her; Al was ten, had no memories, and she was being a bitch. “It's not as bad as it seems.” She tried to use a chipper tone. “I'll just get automail, and I'll be good as new. You'll see.”

Fuck, port surgery. _Again._

They were both silent, and Ed was certain Al remembered days spent playing with Winry outside the Rockbell home, when the horrible screams of Granny's patients filtered through those cheerful walls.

Al's knuckles brushed her back as he grabbed the back of the chair. He laid his forehead on top of her hair. “I just want you to be okay,” he said in a small voice.

“I will be.” Ed reached back and patted his head. “It's not as bad as we remember as kids.”

It was worse.

* * *

“Isn't there a closer exit?” Al whined. His leather moccasins padded quietly on the stone as he pushed her chair. “I'm tired.”

The fact that Al _could_ be tired raised Ed's spirits terrifically. The whining would probably get on her nerves, but for now it was helpful. The basics of brother-care had slipped her mind. She'd only transmuted the coverings for his feet after he complained the first time, leaving his trousers at an unflattering length just below the knees.

Heh. Leather knickerbockers.

“Well, yeah.” Ed smirked. “We could've been outta here hours ago.”

“ _What?”_

“But I don't fancy explaining to the military how we got into Central Command practically naked, so...”

Al groaned. “You're the worst.”

 _I know._ “Whatever. You love me, anyway.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I think I get why people do genderswaps, now. I can do whatever I want and blame it on that. Cool.


End file.
